Human
by Amphlosion
Summary: This story is about a boy and his attempts to recall something important that he was thinking about the night before and what he learns from those thoughts with the help of his Quilava.


Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon. I merely use it as a paradigm for my story.

I wrote this in two parts separated over a period of time, so you might see a change in how I wrote it due to that. Thoughts are in _italics. _If you read this, I'd appreciate a review of it, although that is not necessary. For some reason it won't let me insert a horizontal ruler (line). Obviously, the story begins after "Human."

Enjoy.

"Human"

As the light of dawn stretched over the horizon in a region called Johto, a beam of light shot through a window on the side of a house and landed directly onto a boy's eyes. Aroused by this bright light, the boy opened his eyes, only to be blinded. After a hasty covering of his eyes, he sat up in his bed, blinking to get the sleep out of his eyes as he looked around his room, which was littered with paper. Unable and unwilling to get out of bed at such an early time, he fell back into his previous sleeping position, only to be reminded of why he had woken up in the first place. Realizing that the sun would not let him go to sleep, as well as the fact that he was too lazy to walk a few feet to close the curtains, he got out of his bed.

As he tried to navigate through the miniature battle zone that was his room, the boy searched through the fuzzy shapes to find some clothes to wear. After he found some that he hoped were not dirty, he went to take a shower. Before taking a shower, the boy put two contacts over his hazel eyes after a few failed attempts. By the time he had gotten into the hot shower, his mind had begun to work again after the hours of sleep.

_What was it that I was thinking about last night_, the boy thought to himself. _I know there was something, and it kept me up for at least an hour, but now I can't remember it. It had to be important because I recall only thinking about one thing_. The boy sighed, _I'll remember it later . . ._

After drying off from the shower and brushing his teeth, he walked down to get some breakfast. He grabbed a bowl and poured himself some Eeveeos, a cereal that featured all of the evolutions of Eevee. After adding milk and getting himself a spoon, he went to the table to eat. As he looked out the window as the sun continued to rise, he slowly spooned the cereal into his mouth. Once he had almost finished the cereal, he took a nice, slow yawn and stared down at the spoon.

_I wonder how they make spoons_, he thought to himself. _They probably just melt the metal and then press it together, or something like that. Same thing with the forks. But not knives. Those don't seem like they could be made merely by pressing the metal and letting it harden. Maybe they are all made with some sort of mold_.

As the boy pondered the ever-so-interesting topic of utensil making, his mom came down the stairs and drew him from his thoughts, asking, "Jonathon, what are you doing up so early?"

His thoughts suddenly interrupted, Jonathon could only answer with a mere, "Huh?" His mother sighed at his slowness. "Oh, uh, the sun got in my eyes and woke me up. And how many times have I had to say that it's Jon, not Jonathon?" he asked, slightly annoyed at the use of the formal version of his name.

"I'll call you by the name that your father and I gave you," his mother replied as if it had been said before.

Jon sighed; she still hadn't called him by his preferred name even though he had been using it for a long time. "Fine," he said for the hundredth time as his mom went to get ready for work. "Ugh," he grunted as he tasted the now soggy cereal. _Great,_ he thought as he quickly finished the cereal. After putting his stuff away, he walked outside to think.

After sitting down, his long-time companion came over and lay down by Jon. "Hey Quilava," he said to a yellow-bellied, blue-backed echidna with a flame on it's head and another flame for a tail. Quilava had been with Jon for many years and had often listened to Jon's ideas as he thought them up. The creature had helped him refine his ideas and understand them more clearly many times before. The two had originally started a journey together when Jon was ten and Quilava was a mere Cyndaquil, the pre-evolved form of Quilava, but Jon had found out that he and his Quilava preferred thinking far more than traveling, so the two had returned to Jon's former home a year or so later so that he could continue to go to school and learn more.

"I've been thinking," Jon began, "about what really, I don't know. I've been trying to figure out what it is, but I can't." He sighed and dropped his head backwards, staring up into the sky.

"Quil?" asked his companion in its own dialect.

"Oh. I was thinking about it last night," replied Jon, understanding what his companion was asking. Just then, he saw a car go by in the distance, pushing his thoughts forward, "I wonder how a car works. I know you use gas to make it move, but how does it do that? I bet burning the gas somehow makes energy to spin the wheels. But why use a car when you could use pokémon, which are much cleaner, as transport? It seems like cars are a waste." As he dictated his thoughts, Quilava listened intently. "And it's not just cars. There are lots of other things that could be done by pokémon just as well, if not better, than machines. Why make these things if we have pokémon? From what I've learned in History class, pokéballs have been around for a long time . . ." he trailed off as he looked down.

He had taken out Quilava's pokéball and enlarged it. It was an orb the size of an apple with the top half red and the bottom half white, separated by a strip of white metal that had an assortment of buttons on it. "These are really amazing things," he said softly as he stared at the ball in his hands. "They can hold pokémon many times their size somehow and return them to their original state many years later." As his thoughts flooded through, he stared off into the distance, "If we have these, why develop anything that a pokémon can do better? What's the point of all these technological advancements if there are things that have been superior to it for a long time that can be controlled if one tries . . ."

"That was what I was thinking about!" exclaimed Jon, startling Quilava, who had been thinking about it as well. "Why do we make all these technological advancements when there's no need? Pokémon don't do this, so why do we? We're all intelligent creatures. What do you think Quilava?"

Quilava, who had calmed down, stood on its hind legs and pointed at Jon, "Quilava!"

"What? I don't understand what you mean . . ." said a confused Jon. "I haven't answered my question. If I had, I wouldn't be asking myself it still. Unless . . ." he trailed off as a new understanding hit him. "The answer is in my questioning! We do this stuff because we want more knowledge and understand. There's no deeper meaning. It's because we're human."


End file.
